A headlamp is a portable light that allows the user to illuminate an area without the need to hold the light. Since the light is mounted on the user's head, the user is free to use his or her hands for the task at hand. One common type of headlamp is a portable light having one or more straps for mounting the light on the user's head.
One particular field that a headlamp could be particularly useful is the field of emergency services, including firefighters and rescue personnel. However, emergency personnel wear safety helmets that often make the use of a strap mounted light difficult or impractical. Further still, the helmets used by emergency personnel vary significantly in shape and size. Additionally, safety codes preclude connections that would alter the physical characteristics of a helmet. For instance, a mounting element that would require a hole to be drilled into the helmet could require recertification for each helmet onto which the flashlight would be mounted. Obviously, it would be cost prohibitive to perform such re-certification for all of the various different helmets used by emergency personnel.
Many solutions have been proposed for mounting a flashlight onto helmets, however, the known solutions suffer from one or more substantial drawbacks. For instance, some of the known mounting elements are operable with some known helmets, but are limited to a few basic helmet designs. Other mounting elements are complicated and do not rigidly mount the light in a fixed orientation. Other lights fix the orientation of the light, but do not allow the beam to be adjusted for a particular helmet and/or user. Additionally, the known mounting elements are add-on units that are connected to the helmet by the user, and then connected to the light.